The 2016 study has 774 pages, 296 tables and figures. Worldwide markets are poised to achieve significant growth as the rehabilitation robots, active prostheses, and exoskeletons are used inside rehabilitation treatment centers and sports facilities providing rehabilitation for all patients with injuries or physical dysfunction.

Research has found that by actively engaging stroke patients in repetitive tasks, the brain is able to rewire neurological pathways to motor functions. In this manner patients who have lost functions are able to relearn movement. The awareness and movement of hemi-paretic limbs can occur and functional recovery can continue even years after the brain injury. Much of the damage to a brain comes from lack of oxygen, even brief lack of oxygen is detrimental to the brain. The ability to recover is an ongoing process, something that robotic therapy over time will help.

Now, the reimbursement times for physical therapy are limited, and clinicians tell patients that everything that can be done has been done after a relatively short time. Robotic rehabilitation can continue after services are no longer paid for, giving people longer recovery times and more hope to regain lost function.

Robotic rehabilitation devices are based on automated process, use of a motor or use of microprocessor technology controlled by software. Rehabilitation robot vendors have set out to create repetitive process that works to help people improve their physical wellbeing using a robot, to improve more than they would without the robot. Improvements come because of a reduction in the cost of care delivery, making the rehabilitation more affordable and therefore able to be continued longer, or because of a reduction in boredom.

Lack of knowledge about what protocols would work for a particular patient in a particular situation contributes to lack of rehabilitation benefit and patients stuck without optimum movement. Rehabilitation robots can be customized to create automated process that is responsive to patient needs.